The Lost War (Hectic Series: Book One)

Chapter 2

Kim was awoken rather rudely by someone banging on her door at an obscure hour in the morning.
At least she thought it was obscure.
She hadn't slept well, which wasn't uncommon at all, but last night had been especially troublesome. She drifted off sometime around sunrise and was awoken by the irksome knocking well past the time the sun had risen.
She only thought it was early because her head had been covered by the blanket, and she had unpleasantly discovered it was mid-morning when the sun burned her eyeballs out of the sockets.
She cleared her throat and said in her best I-am-the-Empress-and-know-exactly-what-I-am-doing (although sometimes it didn't feel like it) voice, "Yes, yes. What is it?"
A muffled voice called out, "the demon, miss. From the sky-hole. He's here."
Kim started and jumped out of bed and into the washroom, pulling on her dress with such frantic haste that had anyone been watching her they would have thought she had never before dressed herself in her life.
She ran a comb through her hair and applied a thin layer of powder to her face to conceal the dark circles under her eyes, dark circles caused by lack of sleep which had been there for quite a while now.
She caught her reflection in the mirror and stopped.
Ah, hello, Empress. Nice to see you again. Don't you look well put together. Very lovely.
Unlike Kim, she thought, and laughed in spite of herself.
The white silk dress fell all the way down to her ankles. It was form-fitting, accentuating her slim waist a bit too much for her liking, and the scooped neckline barely brushed the ends of her shoulders. The sleeves ended just above her elbows. The back of the dress was cut low enough to allows her wings not to be obstructed.
Her brown hair tumbled in natural waves down to her hips. Her skin was pale and without blemish, except for the dark circles, which had been artfully hidden.
She could have been considered beautiful, were it not for the eyes. And the wings, obviously.
Although they didn't take away from her beauty but rather added a unique twist, no matter how pretty they looked society would never overlook its biases. To everyone they were and always would be something to simultaneously envy and fear.
The sources of envy and fear in question were a bright purple, as all Hectic's eyes were, that turned black when they used their power.
The other colors weren't such an oddity in her world. Aerrs, people with blue eyes, could levitate objects and create
energy forcefields.
Myrti, green eyes, could turn invisible.
Carinus, brown eyes, were natural healers and could manipulate auras.
Hectics were the only ones whose eyes changed color when they used their power (the other eyes just became brighter), and they were the only ones whose power was so chaotic. And, of course, they had wings.
It certainly discouraged anyone from pursuing her.
Not that she was looking for a relationship, of course.
Right now she had a demon to deal with.
Kim met him in the throne room and sent the two soldiers standing watch out.
He wasn't really a demon at all, at least not by what her eyes could tell. In fact he looked pretty normal.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, stubble on his jaw.
He didn't carry a sword but some strange hunk of metal in between his belt, and his clothes were an odd mottled green color.
Kim watched him with guarded fascination as she sat down in her chair.
She gestured for him to take a seat and he did at the far end of the table.
"Empress Kim," he said with a dip of his head, and Kim suddenly wondered, what were the odds that they spoke the same language?
"Yes, Mr....?"
"Carver," he said, "Max Carver."
He was extremely polite. A little too polite for her liking.
"I understand that your...people....came out of the sky?" Sky people. Wasn't that a way to make herself look completely unprofessional.
He laughed a short, sharp cackle. "Yes, yes.
That is how it looks, isn't it? You see, Kim-" she bristled at the use of her first name, her wings trembling. No one but Oliver called her by her first name without the precedent "Empress", and to hear this demon do so now was unsettling-"my people are an extremely advanced race. Not that you aren't doing so well yourself, I see you even have indoor plumbing! Remarkable."
Kim stared at him, slightly confused and a tad bit offended.
"Of course..."
"But you still use swords and you don't have guns-"
"...Guns?"
He held up the metal from his belt. "Ah, yes, guns. They fire little pieces of metal at alarming speed, which bury in flesh."
Kim folded her hands on the tabletop, tightening down the Empress Mask. "I would imagine that we never developed such weapons because we have no use for them.
It seems that you do not have powers?"
"No, no, we do not." He leaned forward. "I was able to witness your guards using their powers, and I have to admit I am fascinated. How does it all work?"
His cordial, casual tone was grating on her nerves. Whatever you're here for, whatever it is you want, spit it out and quit playing games, demon.
"Blue eyes can levitate things," she said bluntly, "green can go invisible. Brown eyes are natural healers and can speed up the healing process."
"And your power? I mean, besides the obvious flight, of course."
Kim held up a hand.
Black lightning crackled around her wrist and down to her fingertips as her pupil bled out to the iris, covering the purple in inky blackness.
She pointed at him and the lightning shot out.
He jumped back, upending his chair, and backed up a few feet.
The lightning shrieked to a stop a mere few inches from his nose. His hair stood on end.
"Chaos, Mr. Carver."
Suddenly the lightning retracted and disappeared, the iris of her eyes changed from black to purple, and Carver, looking very
shaken, collapsed into his seat.
Kim smiled warmly, but her violet eyes were cold. "Now, why have your people trespassed in our world?"
Max Carver swallowed and said, "we have burned ourselves out, Empress Kim. Obviously you have no understanding of what nukes are, but in my world-Earth-we have weapons that can cause unimaginable destruction. And we have used them in war.
Now our planet is dying, our resources are depleted, and we come to you pleading for help.
We did not open the inter dimensional hole.
We know that it came from your world, and we just happened to stumble upon it.
We have discovered that the universe is sort of like a...a layer cake. There are multiple planes, levels, if you will, of existence, and multiple similar dimensions on the same level. That is why we speak the same language, give or take a few phrases and words. Because our dimensions exist on the same "floor" of the universe."
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, folded it in quarters, and slid it across the long table to her.
Kim unfolded it and blinked, staring at the document with mounting frustration. "What is it exactly that you want? Resources? Shelter?"
"Both," Carver said, "we were hoping to occupy a small portion of your land for housing and resources. Your world is a good half-way bigger than ours and could easily house all of my people.
We could even take another continent-"
"There is none."
Carver blinked at her. "Pardon?"
"The Alliance, this supercontinent, is all that there is on this planet. The rest is ocean, which takes up approximately three fourths of the world."
"Fascinating," he mumbled, and he seemed genuinely intrigued, "the planet's core must not have the suitable conditions to allow for continental drift..."
"I do not care for your blatherings," Kim said, "what I care about is the fact that you expect my people to pay for your ignorant mistakes." She waved the document.
Carver's voice remained cordial, but tension crackled in the air like the black lightning. "You have one week to reach a decision and sign that. Until then I request housing in this estate, and I will return to my world to inform the Master upon hearing your decision."
Kim knew that these demons, or whatever they were, would not give up. They cared about resources. They would have no problem committing mass genocide to take over the Alliance as their own. To Carver, Kim was simply an inconvenience.
He knew that she knew this, and she knew that he knew that she knew this.
You have one week to reach a decision...and then what? If she opted to turn them down?
"The guards outside the door will show you to a guest room. You will stay for one week, I will give you back your paper, and you will leave." She stood without further warning,
gripping the paper in her hand, and left before Carver had even pushed his chair in.
She flapped her wings angrily.
Oh, by all that was good and pure she hated these things.
Who did they think they were, claiming superiority like this? This was not their world. Carver had said it himself, their world was dying.
And this world would die right along with it if the demons gained control.
And what did he mean, the hole had come from the Alliance? How could such a thing happen?
She slammed the door to her office and found Oliver sitting in a chair with Dex by his side, crunching on some type of bone.
"What happened?" Oliver asked. "Did the demon-"
"Oh, he came all right, and a little piece of shit he was, too."
Kim reiterated the entire story in a single breath, and when she was done Oliver sat in stunned silence with wide eyes.
"What are you going to do?"
Kim stared down at the paper in her hand and said slowly, "I'm going to give them what they want. For now. While they're busy doing their thing I prepare the army. They make one wrong move, put just one toe over the line, I'll take their guns and shove them up their asses."
Oliver's face reddened at her choice of words. Kim wasn't much of a trash-talker, but she could spit venom when she wanted to.
"What intrigues me," he said as he tapped his cane, "is the hole. How did we create it?"
Kim shook her head in defeat. "No idea. Why don't you look into that while I sort this mess out? See if you can't find anything up in the library."
Oliver nodded enthusiastically. He liked books.
"I'm not even sure I believe him, about the hole, I mean. He could have just said that to confuse me."
"Don't worry," Oliver said, "if there's anything to be found, Dex and I'll find it." He stood, leaning on his cane, and was gone quicker than Kim would have imagined an old man with a bum leg could move.
She leaned back in her chair, thinking that Oliver was perhaps the only thing that had kept her sane all these years.
And then she grabbed the map on her desk, a pencil, and began to draw.
The Alliance was a basically a big rectangle, with the Rang'Shada mountains splitting it North and South down the center.
Leanah and Releigh were on the West side of the moutains, Tamera and Sarrin on the East. The hole was situated just North of Sarrin in the ocean.
She shaded in a decent sized region along the coast of Sarrin that was mostly unpopulated forest. It could probably house a good 2 billion people. She had no idea how many demons there were, but they would have to make do for now.
And then she put pencil to paper and signed her name:

Empress Kim Lyland

Max Carver, now in his guest room, loaded and reloaded his gun chamber absentmindedly.
Satanic, that witch-woman was. All of them, but the purple eyes? Even more so.
Since the bombs went off in 2050 and the entire world became a devoutly Christian nation, to an obsessive degree, anything considered unholy was mercilessly dealt with, and the witch-woman was the farthest from holy as you could get.
He rubbed the cross-necklace under his uniform, said a quick prayer, and went back to his gun chamber.
Filth, demons, vile, unholy creatures. The devil had obviously had his way with this world (what other than Lucifer's servants would possess such horrid abilities?), and mankind had come to save it.
They would bring God's light to this God-forsaken place, and humans would flourish here. But first they needed to send the demons back to Hell, and that's just what he planned to do.
She would sign the "treaty" and they would abide by it at first.
But then, when the moment came, they would strike.
They would make these demons cry out to the Holy Father for mercy, but He would offer none.
And they would be the Saviors of this world, and after this world there were oh so many more.
Oh so many more demons to kill.
Oh so many more souls to save.